Charles M. Blow: 'Make No Mistake: This Debate Is NOT About THIS President Or THIS Excecutive Order'

[kpete]

Bigger Than Immigration
NOV. 23, 2014
Charles M. Blow

Don’t let yourself get lost in the weeds. Don’t allow yourself to believe that opposition to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration is only about that issue, the president’s tactics, or his lack of obsequiousness to his detractors.

This hostility and animosity toward this president is, in fact, larger than this president. This is about systems of power and the power of symbols. Particularly, it is about preserving traditional power and destroying emerging symbols that threaten that power. This president is simply the embodiment of the threat, as far as his detractors are concerned, whether they are willing or able to articulate it as such.

............

Pay attention to the overall response from all sources, particularly the rhetoric in which it is wrapped

.........................


Make no mistake: This debate is not just about this president, this executive order or immigration. This is about the fear that makes the face flush when people stare into a future in which traditional power — their power — is eroded, and about their desperate, by-any-means determination to deny that future.

..............

MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/opinion/charles-blow-bigger-than-immigration.html?_r=1

[Segami]

1. K&R

[Ninga]

2. I hope I live long enough to join the throngs of people

in every city, who will take to the streets shaking their fists and signs at DC.

Charles Blow has nailed it (once again).

[mindwalker_i]

3. I hit "rec" and it jumped from 12 to 20

Granted, I read the whole article.

That was a very insightful essay. Obama being black is part of Repubs problem, but the other part is that he's a democrat, and Repubs will seamlessly make the transition to him being liberal. As Blow points out, liberalism isn't an alternative political philosophy, it's a rot that needs to be cleansed.

[kpete]

7. Good

that you read the WHOLE THING

I am limited to 4 lines but I really liked this too:

From this worldview, liberalism isn’t simply an alternate political sensibility, but a rot, an irreparable ruination, a violation of the laws of the land as the founding fathers (most of whom owned slaves at some point) envisioned, but also of the laws of nature, which they see as being directed by God. There are so many examples of this: opposition to L.G.B.T. rights, to the science undergirding climate change and efforts to arrest that change, and to allowing women a full range of reproductive options.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/opinion/charles-blow-bigger-than-immigration.html?_r=1

[fasttense]

18. So WHY do RepubliCONS think this way?

Who does it serve to spout this authoritarian BS? Who gains by making up a God who demands obedience and blind faith but nothing more? Who wins every time some liberal is shut up?

Why the uber rich capitalists who control the current democratic government in the US. And they control it because the majority of people allow them to accumulate huge masses of wealth. This huge gulf between the richest and the poorest in the US is NOT natural or normal. It is a probable outcome of any capitalist system. It's the capitalist system we are using that is the root of our dysfunctional political system.

[kpete]

25. "Capitalism"

NOT natural or normal.


thanks fasttense,
kp

[Cosmocat]

26. That my friend is a mystery

I have SO many good people in my life, decent, giving, kind people, who are till death republicans who eat that shit up with a spoon.

I am at a loss ...

[rhett o rick]

32. They are ignorant authoritarians. They always align with the biggest bully even if they

get beat up themselves once in a while.

[dotymed]

35. +9000000000000000000000 n/t

[mindwalker_i]

28. That's the real key in the article

At some point, republicans decided to take the position that they were at war with an enemy - us who disagree with them and have a different political philosophy. So when they aren't in power, their only goal is to get back into power. They don't argue about political philosophy. Instead, they demonize those who disagree as being unamerican. So when republicans are in power, all of their efforts are geared toward staying in power, normally by giving people who support them tax breaks or other perks to keep then supporting republicans monetarily.

Republicans are like tape worms: their entire organism is geared toward reproduction.

[libodem]

4. What a sharp writer

I like what Charles has to say.

[HoosierCowboy]

5. Amen

enuf said

[spanone]

6. k&r...

[Prophet 451]

8. They think any Democratic president

is illegitimate by definition of being a Democrat.

[WinkyDink]

11. As with Democratic voters.

[Prophet 451]

21. Yep, same mentality

It's a little like Dr Doom. Doom is superior because he's Doom. Republicans are right because they're Republicans.

Doom makes for a great supervillain but I'd rather not have him leading the free world.

[still_one]

9. They had no problem under bush giving unprecedented power to him through the Patriot Act, and the

IWR.

President Obama using a mechanism that has been used for over a century, and they say it is an abuse of power?

[WinkyDink]

12. It's the other side of #8 above: BY DEFINITION, a Republican President can do NO wrong, let alone

anything illegal.

[Cartoonist]

13. To republicans, when Obama breathes

it is an abuse of oxygen.

[moondust]

15. Don't forget the UNITARY EXECUTIVE.

...in 1987, Ronald Reagan issued a signing statement that declared: "If this provision were interpreted otherwise, so as to require the President to follow the orders of a subordinate, it would plainly constitute an unconstitutional infringement of the President's authority as head of a unitary executive branch."[19]

The George W. Bush administration made the Unitary Executive Theory a common feature of signing statements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

Dictators.

[alfredo]

30. Bush did express his desire to be "the dictator."

[kelliekat44]

10. This man is on to something and knows it. I have said all along the GOP's worse nightmare is

a black man who does not fear them. There must be the protection of God around him because the power bastards would have destroyed him by now.

[DemoTex]

14. Charles Blow quotes The Rev. Mr. Huckabee ..

“I always thought that Scripture was eternal and unchanging, but apparently, now that Obama is president, Scripture gets rewritten more often than Bill Cosby’s Wikipedia entry.”

The same Man-of-the-Cloth - Huckabilly - has a multi-million dollar mansion on Blue Mountain Beach, near Destin, in the Florida panhandle. So much for any semblance of a vow of poverty, or anything close to it, for the Reverend Mr. Huckabee. Where would Jesus live, anyway, if he could? Not in a house built on sand. Mr. Huckabee must have missed Matthew 7:24-27 in Bible 101 (the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders). He also slept through Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall," and most likely he missed Hosea 8 : 7 ("Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind ..&quot too.

Enough from Huckabee. Too much from Huckabee, in fact. I wish Pastor Huckabee would just STFU, almost as much as I wish Cheney would too.

[AtheistCrusader]

16. They're terrified Obama is going to accomplish anything.

They've gridlocked DC so tight, not much is getting done, by design. This is an opportunity for Obama to get something done, something material he can point to as progress.

And they are shitting their pants over it.

[alfredo]

31. Any accomplishment by Obama is a blow against white supremacy.

That must be avoided at all costs. Remember, GOP means "Guardians of Privilege."

[noiretextatique]

17. it's the last gasp of rich, white, male, chrisitian hegomony

as the natural order of things. i've been posting on the coffee party's facebook page, and the vitriol directed at Obama is truly senseless. NONE his detractors can't ever describe anything REAL about why they detest him. it's Benghazi, the birth certificate, he's a dictator, a Socialist, and an Islamist, etc, etc, etc, not a single thing of substance. then they whine about "the race card" when i reached the inevitable conclusion. it is truly sad when you are so selfish that you believe your place in life is dependent on keeping others out of the game. that's some serious insecurity.

[DetlefK]

20. I read a sci-fi novel a while ago: "Lord Of All Things"

In this novel a scientist invents some kind of super-technology that would completely take away the need for any further human labour. Everybody could be rich and live a life free of the necessity of work because that technology could provide him with, except for human contact, literally everything he needs.

There is a scene where a board of investors is told of this invention. Most are confused and don't like it. Their counter-argument: If people no longer need money for a living, their fortunes would be useless.

[L0oniX]

19. Old white racists are having their last gasp of polluted air.

[DFW]

22. The power to do nothing

Bonehead somehow thinks that is better than sharing the power to do something.

[LawDeeDah]

23. Yes. And this should convince some people that Obama really isn't a corporatist

hired to steal from the rest of us and give to them. It's crazy how the repugs absolutely hate him and fear him, but yet Obama is working for them.

go figure!

[bhikkhu]

24. Disagree. Its not about democracy, its about old white racists wishing for "traditional power"

The idea that we're all equal, that we should all have a level playing field, that every person is as fundamentally as good and deserving as the next, is what makes them quake in their boots.

To reframe it as a struggle between people-power and government power misses that "the struggle", at least as portrayed in the media and blustered out in congress, disappears more or less when a white male repug holds "the power".

[angrychair]

27. not to be pete the pessimist

But all of you have been paying attention to the last several election cycles, right? Less than 40% of all citizens actually vote...at all. We have the lowest average voter turn out of any modern democracy in the world. Not only are we not the "shining beacon on the hill" we aren't even the night light.
Chuck Hagel quit today and I would bet good money that more than 50% of our fellow citizens don't even know who he is or what he does. In fact I would bet even more good money that very few people (30% or less) could name more than three people in PBO's cabinet.

The sad fact is that our fellow citizens checked out long ago and as long as the "big booty" songs and iPhones keep rolling in they could give a shit...at least until they can't afford them anymore...by then it will be to late. The royal plutocracy will be in place with the media, money and guns to keep the people in place.

For what it is worth, I hope I'm wrong.

[alfredo]

29. Obama refuses to step into the gutter and remove his hat as the white man passes.

[indepat]

33. Working on a grab of complete power reminiscent of what happened in Europe in early '33?

[Iwillnevergiveup]

34. Charles Blow

is so tuned in...a brilliant writer who is making quite a name for himself.

K&R

[madokie]

36. You got that right