Race is a distraction, but it’s more than that. A false argument is like a mask. You can put it on, but after a while you can’t take it off. The more time that the left spends immersed in the grammar of racial grievance, the less able it is to speak any other language. The Democrats aren’t just cynical, they are also becoming illiterate and unable to articulate ideas that don’t revolve around a great split between races, genders or two groups, one oppressed and one oppressing.
The Democratic Party’s poverty of ideas is self-inflicted. Snide progressives may sneer at Rand, but what exactly are they packing besides TED talks and trendy books that exist to make their owners feel smart for not reading them? Democrats rarely talk about guiding philosophies now because they don’t exist. They have no grand plan to make the country better. Even Alinsky is nothing but a blueprint for consolidating power in a spurt of postmodern multicultural Machiavellianism.
Progressives can rage and sneer, roar grievances and pose as the oppressed, but what do they actually believe in except the evil of their opposite numbers on the right? The Republican Party is no towering wall of ideas, but the Democratic Party has forgotten everything but bigotry. If it has to speak without relying on its racism props, then it mumbles something about marching together to the future, throws in something about families, children, technology, clean energy, environmental challenges and soaks up the applause of its captive audience.
Ask Obama why he should be reelected and he tells you that it’s to “finish what we started.” Not “he”. For once the great ego who uses “I” like the letter is about to be removed from the alphabet resorts to “we”, because he is already passing the blame to someone else. What is it that we started? No one knows. There’s something about health care reform, the auto industry and killing Bin Laden. Not to mention holding Wall Street accountable in between Wall Street fundraisers and of course, protecting our values, whatever those are.
With the passing of time it becomes difficult to figure out what, if anything, the latest Democrat actually stands for. From JFK onward, there was no longer a legacy, just a strange disastrous mix of incompatible policies and spiraling destruction. The incoherence has only grown worse with time. Bill Clinton was the deregulating draft dodging radical who would occasionally bomb things when the mood suited him. John Kerry was the anti-military military man volunteering for duty to keep our country safe from military solutions. Obama is here to lead us into some vague future with lower tides, drones strikes and racism for everyone.
Obama is running on a program of bank bailouts and bank accountability, an end to wars while winning all the wars, including those he started, and including those he lost. He’s running to cut our dependency on foreign oil by killing domestic drilling and make us all better people by confusing the hell out of us. This rigamarole wouldn’t have gotten past Stage One in the Democratic Party two generations ago. It’s barely passing muster now, only because no one is paying attention, and to make sure no one pays attention, the usual suspects troll everyone by dealing out some race cards.
There is no area of his governance that could survive a detailed 5-minute discussion with anyone who isn’t a halfwit. All that’s left is trolling the Republicans to cover up the basic weaknesses in an agenda so incoherent that even few of his own supporters would sign on to it. And this isn’t new, it’s just more shameless than ever.
Progressives have become intellectual illiterates, they have memorized reams of political diagrams and are experts on the sufferings of obscure people in obscure places. They pride themselves on thinking that they know all the secret sufferings of the waitress who brings them their check, but this tawdry New Age empathy does not translate into an ability to help her or to help anyone else. They are forever priding themselves on their willingness to help people and using that pride to justify their own wealth and power. They are always on the verge of helping someone, but they never get done helping anyone except themselves.