The paranoid answer

posted at 11:05 pm on July 3, 2010 by

Get out the tinfoil hats, folks, and let us delve into the realm of raving paranoia. Is there a different way to read the news lately?

The sane answer: they’re blithering incompetents. The paranoid answer: they’re doing it on purpose.

Glenn Reynolds asks, “Why is the Gulf cleanup so slow?”

The sane answer: because the Obama administration has sold its soul to the unions, and is reluctant to do anything that would make union leaders angry.

The raving paranoid answer: Because Obama wants this oil spill to be dreadfully harmful, because it will sour Americans on drilling in the ocean, and on oil (and other fossil fuels) in general. Never waste a crisis, my friends, and this crisis can help lead all the troglodytes (that’s you and me) away from their accustomed gas guzzlers and wasteful lifestyles towards the paradise of “green” energy and sustainable lifestyles.

Nile Gardiner says, “America is sinking under Obama’s towering debt”.

With his reckless big government policies, Barack Obama threatens to run his country into the ground, with American decline the inevitable end result. It is not too late to reverse course, but so far there is not a shred of evidence that the president is willing to do what is necessary.

The sane answer: Obama doesn’t think that far ahead, and Obama has a deep and abiding faith that socialism will, despite a hundred years of evidence to the contrary, solve all of this in the long run.

The raving paranoid answer: Obama’s goal is to permanently change America, to make it cease to be the strongest nation on the planet, and to once and for all bury American exceptionalism. Destroying the economic viability of the largest economy on the planet is the goal, not an unfortunate side effect, because Americans consume more than their “fair share”. America must become a good citizen of the world and stop being so greedy. If the troglodytes (guess who?) won’t agree, Obama will use indirect means of forcing them into it.

Jimmy Bise, Jr. says: “Wealth does not come from Wealth Faeries.”

Now, those of us who get the origin of wealth understand that prosperity only happens when people own the fruits of their labor. The principle that what you produce belongs to you and you have the absolute right to dispose of it as you wish is the cornerstone of all the wealth and wonders created in America for well over 230 years. If you noodle it through, you can easily figure out why this has so. Economic freedom is the first, and most important freedom we have.

The sane answer is the one Bise gives: the progressives are deeply ignorant about the practical realities of economic theory.

The raving paranoid answer: progressives hate wealth, no matter who has it. They know that these redistribution programs will impoverish everyone, and that’s the real goal of it. The problem with wealth is that creating it at the kind of rate we do is “unsustainable”. Technological civilization, and especially the industrialized world, are careening out of control and we must step backwards from it.

Shiver. I think I need to go hide under my security blanket now.

Blowback

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Sorry, the second link should be this:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100045733/america-is-sinking-under-obama%E2%80%99s-towering-debt/

I don’t know how to edit it.

Steven Den Beste on July 3, 2010 at 11:06 PM

Whatever dear leader’s motivation is, we are all being screwed one segment of industry at a time. We don’t like it one bit, well maybe some don’t mind bending over as long as they get a check for doing it.

Kissmygrits on July 3, 2010 at 11:35 PM

So “sane” and “raving paranoid” are mutually exclusive now, are they?

How about, “we have a radical administration comprised of incompetents and those of bad will. The incompetents can’t effectively deal with the spill and those of bad will want it to go on long enough to kill oil as an option. The incompetents can’t budget to save their lives and those of bad will want the whole system to fail. The incompetents wouldn’t recognize wealth creation if it bit ‘em on the behind and those of ill will know it, but hate it.”

How many people think the world would be improved more by detonating a nuke within zip code 20500 than detonating one on the Deepwater Horizon well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico?

cthulhu on July 3, 2010 at 11:41 PM

Just because you’re not paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

So yes, maybe you are being paranoid. The question is: Are you being paranoid enough?

Erbo on July 4, 2010 at 2:33 AM

Agree: weak article/logic.
The two are not mutually exclusive,
so the “reality” may very well lay “in between” (i.e. a mix of) the two.

Lockstein13 on July 4, 2010 at 8:03 AM

If seeing things as they really are is now raving paranoia, put me in the paranoid column.

erp on July 4, 2010 at 8:26 AM

There are overt agendae and then there is the hidden agenda. Huck Finn is a great example of the hidden agenda. Sometimes you just don’t know when you’re being used, but as adults we generally suspect it is pretty much always when dealing with politicians and strangers.

BarryO is not too good at hiding his agenda. Neither are the Libs in general. What is concerning is that there are many items on BarryO’s wish list that we aren’t privy to.

November can’t come soon enough.

Robert17 on July 4, 2010 at 9:03 AM

Steven, I’m hardly one to jump on board with conspiracy theories. And if it were simply a matter of a slow response here in the Gulf, then I’d chalk it up to simple incompetence. The reality is that we’re dealing with ongoing obstruction and outright lies. (Example: the Coast Guard gave Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser a map pinpointing the location of 140 skimmers. When Nungesser asked for a flyover to verify – and he asked for a reason, that reason being that they’ve lied to him repeatedly – they put him off with excuses three times. On the fourth, they finally admitted that only 31 of the skimmers in question had ever been deployed. The map was a work of fiction.)

This is not incompetence. There is a reason they’re blocking the media and the public. There’s a reason BP and the government are discouraging people from talking. (And this includes people in my own family, but it’s also been reported even by PBS, so there’s no need to take my word for it.)

As bizarre as it sounds, the best explanation to fit the facts on the ground is that it’s deliberate. Obama was extremely clear about his plans for energy in this country – no problem with $4/gal gas, just with the speed at which we reached the number; “energy prices will necessarily skyrocket,” etc. Now the moratorium here, which they’re still trying to implement even though a federal judge shot them down; the EPA invalidating air quality permits at 122 plants in Texas, mostly oil and chemical refineries earlier this week; the stated desire for cap and tax; the stated desire to force us off oil and into a “green energy” setup like Spain is supposedly doing so well on… A raving paranoid theory would be that they caused the explosion. But the idea that they are not letting this crisis go to waste; they are using it to further objectives that they’ve been pretty open about all along, is not crazy. What’s crazy is the federal government’s behavior. I’m seeing it with my own eyes and I can hardly believe it.

Laura Curtis on July 4, 2010 at 5:09 PM

maybe it’s just me, but whenever I read drivel like this I ask myself where the author is coming from.

Maybe there is an alternatie universe where the the top echelons of government are bozos, tripping over themselves in a slapstick routine where every event, just conincidentally, moves the country relentlessly toward more government control of our lives…..as Mr. Den Best suggests.

Or maybe Mr. Den Best has an agenda of his own that he isn’t telling us about.

notagool on July 4, 2010 at 7:51 PM

There is no paranoia problem here. The problem is decades of anti-American hate distilled into one man. The problem for raving psychotics is they can no longer trick a wounded nation with soft talk and classical music. The problem is on display in this essay of omissions.

Feedie on July 5, 2010 at 4:21 AM

Even the paranoid have real enemies.

Insomniac on July 5, 2010 at 9:53 AM

This post has been promoted to HotAir.com.

Comments have been closed on this post but the discussion continues here.

Ed Morrissey on July 5, 2010 at 5:24 PM