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PowerNoonan
What is this a picture of? It is a nail gun, a high-quality piece of equipment that will put nail after nail into board after board. Whatever you need nailed, this thing will nail it, consistently and accurately. And that is precisely why it should be called a Noonanator. Or a PowerNoonan. Or a Pneumatic Noonanizer. To understand why, here’s an article in the Wall Street Journal by its namesake titled “How Global Elites Forsake Their Countrymen:”
The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.
The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”
Once again, this essayist who somehow arrives at far different conclusions than mine, winds up describing in precise terms the problems I see; problems that are not acknowledged by most people who wind up with results like hers.
She’s a riddle. Wrapped in an enigma. Holding a nailgun.
Published in Politics
I always vote against my representative in the primary, even though I generally like him. I’m not voting for a Dem in the general, though.
Elections are the answer, in theory. However, the national debt and the depth of intentionally divisive rancor (now edging on open political warfare) are fair indicators of the lengths to which power-mad politicians will go in order to buy votes and encourage turnout. We can no longer compete with the sheer number of those dependent on the state. They are the ones who keep the elites in office.
Additionally, the educational system, including the “news” media, movies, popular culture, has effectively instilled rote Dem loyalty for enough generations to assure keeping the presidency (and maybe congress as of now) for the foreseeable future. Any successes conservatives have had in local elections make little difference, since federalism, as deconstructed, means local laws are preempted – legally or by corrupt use of raw power – and local government dances to the federal tune. Refuse and lose federal funds.
On which side of that dividing line does she see herself?
It is hard for Washington insiders to have views as jaundiced as some of us here. They know lots of really smart people who are sincere and charming and want to do well, so they don’t see them as evil incarnate. ( except for the Clintons, most race hucksters including the President and his staff) The problems are inherent in the accumulating power, the non accountability and the utter lack of the information they would need to do their jobs even if they tried, but with time even well meaning people stop trying to do much more than favor their career. So if she looks into something she can see it, but if the information and insight is from Washington osmosis, it’s the same old stuff.
You’re correct. I subscribe and have read her forever. For a while I quit, though. There wasn’t a micron between her and Krauthammer/Will, et al. She is a superb writer, and when she does glimpse truth, can be illuminating. She may be starting to see around the onslaught on Trump and the silliness of no borders, etc.
Great question. I imagine she acknowledges her elitism in private, but considers herself down to earth for interviewing and quoting cab drivers, dry cleaners, etc.
I think this revelation of hers ties in well with Murray’s work. It provides some decent diagnosis but not really any treatment.
My only real quibble/quarrel w/Murray is just this lacuna…
Oh, rats! You guys are making this irresistible..Stahp it!
I couldn’t agree more, and I’d hate to think I give the impression of believing otherwise.
The first step in the recovery process is acknowledging the problem.
I think Jonah may have arrived there with his column the other day:
I took from that to mean that the establishment’s response to Trump’s win proves the theory of Trump: the establishment has no principles but winning. Where we go from here is a mystery for me. I don’t know that the outcome of this presidential contest has any effect on the underlying problem of the class divide or the exploitation of it by the powerful.
Sitting in Victor Davis Hanson’s presence has been on my bucket list for years. This Sept. 8 at Hillsdale College. A dream come true.
I have a three word refutation of the above: President Barack Obama. Same thing with Bill Clinton. You think he wouldn’t have gone for a 3rd term if he could get away with it?
Ok, so I’m going to use more than three words. The Founders believed in the principle of rotation (what we would call term limits today), but they didn’t write it into the Constitution. James Madison, you could have saved us some headaches with one more paragraph.
The more pernicious area of “permanent government” is at the agency and regulatory level, I know. No accountability, no transparency, no responsiveness. No loyalty to anything other than the budget allocation & protection of one’s own fiefdom.
Yes, absolutely and if the voters return them we deserve the hell that will befall us.
Madison would’ve created more headaches than he solved.
All of which is funded by a Congress we return with 88% certainty.
The problem isn’t the absences of term limits. The problem is the absence of a self sufficient engaged majority. Term limits do not solve that.
My argument in a nutshell. Want a better government? Get a better people. They reflect us, not the other way around.
The very fact that you’ve chosen to join a website dedicated to political discussion — to say nothing of your knowledge of political history, and your ability to form coherent sentences — marks you as a non-peasant. (For that matter, I’m not certain the word “peasant” has meaning in 2016 America.)
I’m an unabashed elitist. But I define “elite” differently from most. The North Dakotan retail clerk who spends her nights reading scientific literature, the Kentuckian truck-driver who entertains himself with Milt Rosenberg’s podcast, and the semi-retired surveyor who devotes his free time to his church are — in my opinion, at least — as deserving of the title “elite” as any politician or pundit. (Indeed, they may be more deserving.)
But such people, alas, are mere embers within a dying fire.
This idea should be its own post. Very rich soil here.
I’m flattered, but I can’t claim credit for the thought. Joseph Epstein deserves it.
Awfully long, drawn-out “first step” here, though…Hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing don’t get us too far, but they’re easy…
Agree. Much too long and drawn out. I hate to say it, but things just aren’t bad enough yet.
Employment is dismal compared to what it could be, but the rate is 4.9% and if you have a job and 700 credit score you can get a 30 year mortgage for less than 5%. We have 45 million plus on food stamps, but our biggest health problems are diabetes and obesity.
Terrorist attacks happen somewhere else and only touch a few Americans personally. We can sell billions of ten year Treasuries and pay 1.5% interest.
The realizing won’t come until those things start blowing up in our face.
And they wonder why we’re angry. I have a fourteen year old undergoing chemotherapy. I don’t even want to put into words what might happen to her if she were to contract such a virus. And it probably isn’t healthy for me to articulate the loathing I have for the sanctimoniousness and/or opportunism of the geniuses who are getting Americans killed unnecessarily either.
… as she does in the latter portion of this article as well (sigh). But she definitely nailed it with this (and subsequent paragraphs):
:rofl:
Let me point out something everyone already knows.
The are tens of millions of foreigners in this country, a great many who arrived here illegally. Absent illegal immigration, for example, California would quite likely still be a red state, and the present democrat party with its extremist positions would not exist.
It seems quite unfair to Americans to blame merely us for our relentless failures of government, because we are being outvoted by the new people imported by the regime.
This is exactly why they are allowed in, and the left makes no secret that they intend to “fundamentally transform” the United States by demographics, if nothing else.
Despite all this, the Republican party has still managed to win enough elections to control Congress.
Our reward is a GOP leadership that has worked slavishly to get effectively open borders written into law- any law, and in any way they can. That same leadership has rolled over and given the Obama regime essentially everything it asked for, turning the legislative body into nothing more than a very expensive rubber stamp.
Alas, I could not stop this with my one vote.
Xennady, and who refuses to enforce our immigration laws out of compassion? The people we keep re-electing and if anyone suggests enforcing the laws or deporting those here illegally it is considered radical.
From the introduction to the book Slide Rules and Submarines:
In other words, the brass hats need to listen to the officers who are, or have been, in the trenches.
Then why are many on the Right celebrating the crushing victory of Paul Ryan and tut-tutting the obstinate Tim Huelskamp for ‘not playing ball’. We’ve been bashing each others heads in here for the past year. The closest we can come to any sort of unifying statement of principle from all factions is: limited government. If you’re funding it, you ain’t ‘limiting it’.
This movement is full of it.
It’s not compassion. It’s avarice.
These people expect to benefit handsomely by their refusal to enforce the law, and they very often do.
Of course they have no compassion at all for the people harmed by all of this, like the families of people killed by illegal aliens who ignore deportation orders- but I digress.
We elect people with the expectation that they will obey and enforce the law- or we used to.
I think something broke in this country when George Bush betrayed his oath of office by openly refusing to enforce US law, circa 2005, to stop illegal immigration. I figured right than that the GOP would have trouble going forward, and it has.
As evidence today, I note the shocking weakness of establishment GOP figures in the recent presidential primary process.
It seems the public- or at least the GOP-leaning fraction of the public- has grown weary of electing people who believe enforcing US law is a radical crazy idea.
But I’m sure the establishment had a lot of fun watching Jeb Bush’s hundred million dollar bonfire, so they had that.
A populist plan of action that might make me think its goal is something constructive:
I bought “When Character was King,” and couldn’t make it through it. There’s something about her style that’s, for want of a better word, mushy.