Pirates of the Contraction: The Curse of Social Manipulation

Apparently the Somali coast-line isn’t the hottest spot for pirates. There is plenty of plunder, pillaging, and general violence towards the good of the American people coming right out of Washington, D.C. We seem to be missing the archetype peg-legged villain but I’m sure Nancy Pelosi’s prosthetic face will suffice. Wait, there aren’t any talking parrots? Well, Pres. Obama seems to talk a lot and it sure sounds impressive, but in the end it doesn’t mean a damn thing. That should do just fine.

The Sugar-Daddy-in-Chief and his two toadies in congress are pirates of the current economic contraction. The administration and congress are using the crisis to do one thing: sculpt the economic and social landscape in the U.S. to the liking of left-wing demagogues. This administration has no plan for economic recovery, they are simply using the fear and instability in the economy to essentially consolidate government power, limit freedom, and level the population.

Furthermore, the majority of the social manipulation underway is underhanded, elitist, and deceptive. Americans find unpalatable promises of socialist economic intervention and invasive government controls in health-care, the environment, schools, etc. Unfortunately, that's what's on the menu. The voters were offered absurd promises about tax cuts (nowhere to be found), slashing trillions from the budget (apparently by adding trillions in deficit, that's what I call creative accounting) and routing pork from spending (the 8,500 earmarks in the "stimulus" bill notwithstanding). Buyer's remorse somehow just doesn't seem to describe the feeling of being utterly sold out by one's political messiah.

Although pervasive and dishonest by reasonable standards, even the political hacks licking Obama's boots have some remote measure of candor. If the following quotes don't scare you, please go back to admiring the iconic pictures of Lenin, Chairman Mao, and the trés façionable Che Guevara image hanging in your urban studio apartment; return to sipping lattes, hating Sarah Palin, and being a general drain on society at large. You’re beyond saving. Drum roll please:

· The President’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." Something tells me he's not proposing Obama give a speech without a teleprompter. Perhaps they simply want to restore American economic prowess, liberty, and limited government? Been there done that! Let's try the whole socialism thing instead.

· Craig Calhoun, NYU professor, author, and sociology scholar says Obama is using the stimulus bill to reverse a "40-year drift away from the more or less idealistic hope that government would make things better." I guess it doesn't matter if it works or not, just as long as government is the answer to what troubles us. Isn't it curious how left-wingers (and even some "moderate" Republicans) in government shout down anyone who suggests an alternative to bureaucratic solutions?

· William Galston, senior fellow at the left-wing Brookings Institution and former adviser to Pres. Clinton: "These are the principal building blocks of the domestic agenda he articulated." Obama touts the "desperate times, desperate measures" rhetoric as though he's a victim, forced to use massive government spending and oversight to fix the economy. But for those who know him, the reckless spending and social change was always on the to-do list, regardless of economic conditions.

A common thread runs through the fabric of the previous statements: there is more at work than just "fixing the economy". There is a pervasive, subtle, and deleterious agenda underlying the government's recent actions. They're planning on fixing a lot more than the banking crisis. These "pirates of the contraction" are determined to expropriate the fear and panic of the American people to carve out a new America. It's a perverse and hopeless project, but it bequeaths King Barack and his merry court more power and more control. But don't expect them to openly fight for it. Expect a subtle, little-by-little, delusive approach so that one day the American people will wake up overtaxed, under paid, with their freedoms snuffed out apparently to save us from ourselves.

I'll end on this note: this past weekend, my father-in-law and I were watching some mindless network news show. The consensus seemed to be that the American people were rejecting the stimulus/bailout/throw money from the Presidential Motorcade strategy to the poor because "it needs better packaging". The selling points for the spending as follows: unfathomable deficits, lack of accountability, rewarding bad lending/borrowing policies, bailing out financial irresponsibility, and a perverse fascination with "going green" in the midst of a crisis. Well, imagine that? It's a tough sell! Apparently, we just need better packaging. The fact is, you can say your food is escargot with flair and a fancy French accent, but in the end you're still eating snails.