Useful Idiots Update: Love in the Time of Obama

Love in the Time of Obama | Washington Free Beacon: "“The game is rigged,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) famously told the 2012 Democratic National Convention. What an odd situation in which we find ourselves, where the most influential figures in politics, media, culture, and the academy, the leaders of institutions from the presidency to the Senate to multinational corporations to globally recognized universities, spend most of their time discussing inequalities of income and opportunity, identifying, blaming, and attacking the mysterious and nefarious figures behind whatever the social problem of the day might be. This is the way the clique that runs America justifies the inequalities endemic to “meritocracy,” the way it masks the flaws of a power structure that generates Brown-educated cable hosts and personal chefs who open ballparks with a phone call. This is how a new American aristocracy comes into being, one as entitled and clueless as its predecessors, but without the awareness of itself as a class.

“It’s going to be fascinating to see where both of them go,” Obama aide Melody Barnes tells Weisberg. I know exactly where both of them will be going. Straight to the top, Melody. Straight to the top."

I started by quoting the grand finale so you didn't miss it. But its glorious-ness can only be understood after you've RTWT. And this is definitely a RTWT. Here's how it opens:

The first time he saw her from a distance. She was a reporter, observing his workplace from the outside. He was struck by her good looks, her energy. He mentioned her to a friend, who told him she was out of his league. But he persisted. His friend brought him to a party where he found an opportunity to strike up a conversation with her. One thing led to another. He took her to drinks. She mentioned she liked baseball, rooted for the Washington Nationals. They had that in common. So for their next date he took her to play catch. In Nationals Park. When it was closed to the public.

And how can I resist adding this from the middle?:

Click may be a good word for the show, but “clique” is a better one for the world described in Vogue. On the first read the Weisberg piece is notable for its status details: the little things, the style of life of bobo liberals that drives conservatives crazy. I am referring here to the meal Weisberg shares with the couple in Kass’s sure-to-be-expensive Logan Circle townhouse: “butterflied roast chicken with tarragon and preserved lemons, faro risotto with wild mushrooms and leeks, and a green salad with buttermilk dressing” served with a Barbaresco made by friends in Italy. I am referring to Kass’s “hand-forged Carter Cutlery knives, which are produced by a Japanese-trained bladesmith in Oregon.” To the Hermès coat, Nili Lotan sweater, 7 for All Mankind jeans, Hunter + Rag & Bone boots, M Missoni dress, and Prada flats that Wagner wears at various moments in the piece. To the names checked by Weisberg to establish the fact that Wagner is with it, au courant, hip, cutting edge: This Town author Mark Leibovich, Ezra Klein, Jonathan Franzen, Frank Ocean, the Tanlines, and New York restaurants Blue Hill, Carbone, Franny’s, and Vinegar Hill House.

I am referring to the cringe-inducing moments of false modesty. Wagner complains, “Every trip to the high-end knife shop in D.C.’s Union Market ‘costs us about $500.’” Weisberg reports, “Friends describe Kass as reserved,” despite the celebrity chef’s multiple television credits. Weisberg writes, “Their ideal Saturday night is dinner with friends—not a red-carpet event,” and then, in the very next sentence, notes, “In October, they attended the News and Documentary Emmys, at which Wagner was nominated, but sneaked in a side door to avoid the cameras.” Wagner describes her horror when she broke a heel on the way to a job interview with George Clooney (she got the job).

This is your ruling (idiot) class. And as you can tell, they surely spend all their time thinking of fixing the "inequality problem".  That's why it's improved so greatly in all the major cities which have nearly all been run by people just like this for the last 50 years.

Matthew Continetti has done an excellent job on this piece.  If freedom lovers could get stuff like this into the average voter's hands we might have a chance at persuasion.

These people are all "bystanders" to the carnage that is their own handiwork.  And Obama foremost among them -- hence the constant barrage of bad things about his administration that he just read about in the papers today!  (Well, it's actually not true of Obama himself but I'll avoid distraction from my main point.)

But more pieces like this probably won't actually turn the tide since the average low-information voter lives vicariously off of Vogue (and mostly less crafted celebrity oriented) pieces in this vein -- they're really already in on the game if only in a subconscious way.  They will put Continetti's piece down once it gets uncomfortable at the end -- probably before -- as they might re-learn a bit too much about themselves.  But they will lap up the Vogue piece he dissects itself.

And the LIV's have been conditioned inexorably not to learn what floats just below their surface... or learn much of anything for that matter.

It's not cool.  Crimethink in fact even if they've never heard that word before... which was exactly George Orwell's point...

And Aldous Huxley has some additional comments about how our current rulers achieve and maintain control:


Watch at least first minute if you want to understand how we have our current president.  That interview was in 1958.  No wonder the rulers do all they can to keep him dead and buried.

Frankly, I'm amazed that "Brave New World" is even ranked as high as #325 on Amazon.  That must represent a nascent soma shortage I suspect that Obamacare's crony cash for the pharma industry is meant to head off...

UPDATE: And here's the COTD from a commenter on the Vogue piece:

by ThirteenthLetter

Good God, what awful, entitled people. Everything they have, they've gained from being in the same tiny, incestuous circle. Didn't we have a revolution a few centuries back to get away from people like this?

Posted 1/24/2014 7:45:07pm