This Looney Tunes style cartoon clip was released by Harding College (Arkansas) in 1948. It has had over 5 million hits so you may have seen it but I couldn’t resist posting it. You see, I graduated from Harding in 1948. Not the university in Arkansas, but from a High School in Connecticut (Bridgeport).
We didn’t have videos then, but we had movies. We also had trailers. Not the ones that go behind cars, these trailers went in front, in front of movies. There were Buster Keaton shorts, Movietone News and cartoons like the one below. Most were just entertainment but once in a while a trailer carried a message. So it is with this one.
Obama is mentioned at the very end. Not by name of course; it was 1948.
A combination of the success of the free market system and gradual increase of government largess has all but eliminated depression style poverty. The poverty argument no longer engenders the same level of anger when those classed as poor have cell phones and iPads, drive cars, own homes and still pay no income tax.
Today’s anger is not about poverty; it’s about riches. The Wall Street protesters are not fighting poverty; they are protesting the unequal distribution of wealth. They are protesting the fact that some people have more than they do and they want some of it. All you need to do to see why the Occupiers have less is to examine a cross section of them and compare it a cross section of Tea Party types, or upper East-side New York liberals for that matter.
All the rich want to do is keep some of their own money and pay out the rest in taxes and give some to charity. They don’t want to take money from someone else just because someone else has it. Wanting more money may be greed, but isn’t wanting someone else’s money without earning it an even greater greed? The Occupiers want someone else’s money. And they want it to they can buy the latest iPods and better cars. If they really want to end greed they should get a job.
Occupy Chicago is looking like Occupy Lite. A majority of the Chicago protesters appear to be people who have done an honest days work. No serious mob behavior here. Chicago being Chicago, whooda thunk? Nurses are in the fore and the signs actually relate to their complaints. The movement’s various factions certainly are diverse.
Then there is Occupy Oakland where it has already gone violent. The video needs no words.
The Occupations know no limit. Occupies and occupiers are everywhere. How about this one? Occupy Everything. The “About” message put forth by this group on their website explains why it would be a better world if they could only occupy everything.:
Occupy Everything is an anti-capitalist initiative—established in 2009—dedicated to militant research, critical pedagogy and public practices that include mediatic intervention, feminism and the anti-enclosure movement. OE is collectively-operated and dedicated to building an open access culture of resistance. Please send your contributions to…
I could support the mediatic intervention in their agenda but I am diametrically opposed to the pedagogy and pubic practices espoused by this particular occupation faction. And I’m more or less unanimous about that.
So there you have it. From the sublime to the ridiculous, you can choose your group. You can march to overthrow the government and end the free market system or march just to plead for a job. You can even donate to a scam artist. Be careful. It can be dangerous out there.
This is a powerful video. If you still have questions in your mind on what the Occupy movement is about, this is the video will remove all doubt.
The existence of sizable groups of people embracing the beliefs expressed in the video is not a new phenomenon. As Stanley Kurtz explains in his book RADICAL-IN-CHIEF, Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, this is the world Obama chose in his youth. The question is did he ever leave it? His actions as President are consistent with the notion he did not.
When the Tea Party rose on the scene it was no mystery who they were and what they were all about. Oh, of course there were some who didn’t have a clue. They were the people about whom we’ve been saying for years “they just don’t get it” and they don’t. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. Who are all these people who call themselves Occupiers? I just don’t get it.
Gradually we are finding out. At least a few of them are hard line Marxists; at least some of the organizers are. Los Angeles can be added to Atlanta in the come-the-revolution category. Here are the videos. Judge for yourself.
Occupy LA
In this video a young women is leading the group and calling out :”Where’s our bailouts”? Apparently she’s one of the disappointed ones who still have to make their own mortgage payments. Note the lingo as she speaks; she rails on about infrastructure, healthcare and corporate greed. “Corporate fat cats have to go”. Where have you heard that before? It’s straight out of Obama’s book. And it’s not just some words he throws out occasionally; it’s a drumbeat he plays in speech after speech.
“Bloody violence will be necessary and it is coming to achieve our goals, yes a revolution”. Those may not be the exact words but they are the sum and substance of what the speaker said. Barack Obama may have no direct connection whatever to the Occupy people, but he held out the welcome sign, opened the door and is holding it for them. He has given them the words to say and pointed out the enemy he wants them to attack. Community organizer extraordinaire. Saul Alinsky must be smiling in his grave.
There have been many claims made recently that Obama is competing with Jimmy Carter for the title of worst president ever. In reality, there is no competition. Carter just did a lousy job but he was an American president, whereas Barack Hussein Obama’s administration is, as Pamela Geller declares in her book, APost American Presidency.
More OCCUPY posts to come. In the meantime, get a copy of Geller’s book.
No doubt you have seen the video. Scary, isn’t it. Raises goose bumps. The weirdness of it raises many questions as well. Who are these people? What’s their agenda? Are they connected with Occupy Wall St? If so, then how? Who was the man at the microphone? Who was his sidekick in the crowd? Where are they from? Are they or are they not a typical Occupy group? If they are part of the liberal left, why did they deny John Lewis a chance to speak? Could they be a conservative group? Why was there a paucity of blacks in the crowd? Is this or is it not the face of Marxism?
We will try to answer some of these questions. It is too soon to come to any firm conclusions but it is not too early to examine the evidence. Let’s ‘go to the tape’
The first thing that we notice is the use of the cultish technique of speak and chant. The technique accomplishes several things. It slows down the presentation and allows the speaker to stay in control. It allows the speaker to lead the crowd in the desired direction and fool the crowd into thinking that the decisions were theirs, and not those of the facilitator. Chanting mesmerizes the mind, blocking out independent thinking. Chanting together in a crowd unifies the members creating the impression of universal agreement.
Next we notice the raising of hands in the air. This gesture is reminiscent of religious practice more common among the more fundamental denominations. The reason given here for the raising of hands at the demonstration is because clapping prevents people from being heard. That reason is absurd. The people were clapping to hear someone speak, not to shut them up. Nevertheless, the programmed crowd chants the reason back. With that, they have verbalized agreement with the leader, bypassing individual thought. And so it goes with decisions on other matters as well. If someone in the crowd speaks up with an opinion that is contrary to the leader’s position but popular with the crowd, there will be no clapping.
Watching the video, it is abundantly clear from the start that many in the crowd wanted to hear John Lewis. In fact it certainly appeared like the majority wanted to hear him. Majority or not, just “many” should be enough unless the minority is to be denied a voice. There was very positive finger waving in the beginning when the facilitator asked the crowd how they felt about John Lewis. There was also a lot of clapping which prompted the facilitator to restrict any more of that. Nevertheless, the leader and his sidekick in the crowd were successful in maneuvering the people to get behind them and deny John Lewis the opportunity to speak.
Exactly why the organizers didn’t want Lewis to speak remains a puzzle.
In case you are wondering, the facilitator was asking what the block or blocks have said, not what the blogs have said. He used the term block to mean the Occupy group. At the end the repeated chant was “mic is dead”, meaning Lewis will not be given a live microphone to speak.
Now play the video again to see how much you agree with the assessment given here.
When Sen. Dick Durbin stood up in the Senate chamber and told the American public not to do business with a bank he didn’t like, he threatened the free market system. When the President of the United States confirmed and added to the senator’s condemnation, the free market system ceased to exist.
Free is free. Half free is not free. What we have is coercive capitalism, a form of fascism where private ownership of the means of production of goods and services is allowed, but where management is not free to follow the dictates of the market. This, along with crony capitalism has been described by some as the new face of socialism in America.
John Hinderaker at Power Line has written an excellent piece that begins “Nice Bank You Have Here…, a shame if anything should happen to it… The Democrats took gangster government to a new level today…” It’s an excellent post and falls into the category of required reading. Don’t miss it.
Socialist leaders have long realized the challenge of establishing the Marxist form of socialism in a democracy like the United States is an insurmountable one. A strong and prosperous middle class would never willingly accept a government that would appropriate ownership of private enterprise. The alternatives are to employ force with a violent revolution (a very bad choice) or to allow private ownership but control it.
Control comes in many forms. Durbin-Obama coercion is just one of them. Other means of control include appointing czars to oversee various industries, misuse of executive orders, outright flaunting of established law and the passing of bills that are vague, thereby leaving the specifics to be set by the whims of the bureaucracy as dictated from above. Go along get along becomes a near necessity. Those who do more than go along, get along even better. From Solyndra to GE, this is the new face of socialism in America.
Guy de Maupassant ends his great novel “Une Vie” with the statement “Life is never as good or as bad as one thinks.” Conservatives should understand that in politics, things are rarely as good or as bad as one thinks in the aftermath of an election.
Hat tip Paul Mirengoff
DEMOCRACY’S FATE
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
ca. 1840
WELCOME TO RANDOM THOTS
If you are a new reader of Random Thots we invite you to click on the SELECTED POSTS link in the FEATURES sidebar on the right.
Here you will find a list of the most significant articles published within the last year or so, each with a brief synopsis of its content and an easy link to the full article.
RANDOM THOTS 