Perhaps the most astute post-election observation I’ve read yet, via Arnold Ahlert at Jewish World Review:
By now, you’ve heard from most of the chattering classes as to why Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, did so well on election night. You’ve heard about changing demographics, an opportune storm, media malfeasance, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseam.
Let me make it much simpler. On election night, for the umpteenth time, I went to the local food mart, and gave the high school kid working the register a five dollar bill for something that cost $2.32. She punched it into the computer, after which I gave her the thirty-two cents. By now, most of you know where this is going: the dazed look, alternating between the change and me, as if I’d handed her the Dead Sea Scrolls and demanded a translation on the spot. Of course if I’d used that analogy to make light of the moment, it wouldn’t have mattered: these kids aren’t just mathematically illiterate, they wouldn’t know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are either–unless it was the name of a new app for their I-phones.
On the way home, I had the radio on. Without a trace of embarrassment or irony in his voice, the newscaster spoke about a mock vote taken at the local high school. “Barack Obama won in a landslide,” he gushed. After two generations of leftist indoctrination by unionized educators, whose quid pro quo relationship with the Democrat party is written in stone, I don’t doubt it for a minute. Nor was I particularly shocked earlier this year when I wrote about three kids in their late teens and early twenties, who couldn’t place the date of the Civil War within the 50-year spread I gave them to do so. Literacy? If it can’t be reduced to 140 characters for Twitter’s sake, it no longer matters.
[snip]
There’s your so-called demographic. We’ve become a nation with a majority of weak-thinkers, allied with those more than willing to do their thinking for them, as long as they get “free stuff” in return. What is the minority offering as an alternative? Freedom.
Unfortunately, freedom is hard. For one thing, it requires critical thinking skills. For another, it requires effort. Tyranny is easy. Just do whatever someone tells you to do, whether it’s a bureaucrat–or a cash register. What was this election really all about? We are now certain that it is impossible to change the trajectory of nation comprised of millions of people who can’t make change.
As a result, I have a suggestion for the Republicans, one they won’t hear from anyone else: give Barry and Company everything they want, without an iota of resistance. Let ‘em raise taxes and the debt ceiling, gut the military, and run up trillions of dollars of additional deficits and debt. Then stand back, and let an utterly corrupt media chronicle the demise–without being able to pin an ounce of the ensuing socialist catastrophe on an “obstructionist” GOP.
Harry Reid wants to end the filibuster? Tell him it won’t be necessary. For the next four years, Republicans will do what a certain Senator from Illinois made a career of doing: they will simply vote “present” on every bill put before them in both houses of Congress. In effect, give Democrats they same unassailable majority they had in 2008–the same one that led directly to the passage of ObamaCare.
Radical? Compared to what? Watching a president get re-elected, despite four major scandals, the worst recovery on record, and the explosion of entitlements–all of which was blamed on the aforementioned Republican obstructionism? Being blamed for everything that will go wrong from 2012 to 2016, completely irrespective of reality or the truth?
This is what we’re faced with, folks. A nation of morons that would gladly have a man like Obama be their President. A Prince of Fools to lead a nation of fools.
Related Posts
Email This Post
⋅
Print This Post
As God is my witness, my daughter suggested the same thing to me last week, right down to voting present.
“Let me make it much simpler. On election night, for the umpteenth time, I went to the local food mart, and gave the high school kid working the register a five dollar bill for something that cost $2.32. She punched it into the computer, after which I gave her the thirty-two cents. By now, most of you know where this is going: the dazed look, alternating between the change and me, as if I’d handed her the Dead Sea Scrolls and demanded a translation on the spot”
Pssst…Hey. Kid. Just to help you you give him $3 back instead of $2.68.
Summary of Ahlert’s essay:
“Someone working at a convenience store the other day had trouble with basic math so the Republican party doesn’t have a demographic problem.”
His argument is muddled and silly. It’s identical to the argument the left gives: Republicans are dumbing down the dialogue, etc. And what’s his solution? He hints that it’s indoctrination from unionized teachers. I’m against unions and everything but is that even true? So what, we end teacher unions and suddenly people get smart enough to vote Republican?
The fact is immigration, etcetera are divisive issues. As conservatives we need to do some serious soul-searching on whether some long-held platforms can be maintained if we hope to regain national offices.
So far every fucking essay by a fellow conservative is an attempt to avoid self-reflection. Democracy requires compromise. And the fact is, we’ll have compromise on some issues to get progress on the REAL issues that distinguish our politics- fiscal conservatism, national debt, etc.
The solution isn’t as simple as having a candidate with the last name Cruz or Lopez… think back to Michael Steele’s ill-fated attempts to lure black voters over to the GOP. The cynical ploys won’t work here. Nor will the blame game.
The Left is mathematically illiterate?
Rick Santorum once claimed that Obama “lost” American jobs…by “only” creating 240 million jobs instead of 280 million…and that this constituted a 30 million net loss in employment…please, try to identify the errors here. I know your indictment against that teenager in the shop was really an attempt to boast your own ability to compute basic arithmetic. Trust me when I say that this is not very impressive. Indeed, there is a plethora of statistics to demonstrate that liberals have consistently higher intelligence quotients than conservatives, and are therefore far more commonplace in academia, particularly in the math and sciences.
How do you explain the fact that republican analysts honestly believed, without a hint of a facade, that Romney would win the presidency, in spite of all statistical evidence to the contrary? Nate Silver accurately predicted all 50 states; Karl Rove barely predicted half of them. If Republicans lack the capability to predict something as simple as an election, what makes you think they have the skills to make complex economic forecasts and judge on climate change, evolution, etc?
Your cute little anecdote doesn’t do much to counter the statistical evidence stacked against you. That is, that the current Republican party platform openly denies science, math and all advice from experts (which Republicans denounce as “elitist”; better get those hockey moms up there instead!) in their respective fields. There is no reason why their policies are any wiser than their election forecasts. They both rely on “gut feeling”.