socialism or capitalism

I'm gonna jump right in since this is really just a way to vent my thoughts in a semi private way, so I can move on to think about other things.

Occasionally we're given a glimpse into who this mysterious genius we call our president is. People usually miss it and make excuses for what would otherwise be called crazy talk. Why? Because he makes us feel warm and fuzzy: like we are compassionate humans caring for our fellow, less-fortunate, brothers and sisters, or like our dear mother earth would be doomed without our loving hands tending to her. But by putting these glimpses together over time you get a clear view of the entire pretty picture.

Basically the election is coming down to these two options:
1) A socialist hiding behind a bunch of garbage like "fairness" and "we are in this together" that somehow works on many people (which I find more and more astonishing), who can't run on his record which is a wasteful use of crazy amounts of money, an economy that won't rebound, etc etc etc. He instead distracts people by talking about fake wars being waged on women, why you should hate anyone that makes more money than he deems acceptable, and a theme that every person needs the government to hold their hand through life and make everything fair for everyone.  And by fair, he means replacing the ideal of equal opportunity with a mandate of equal outcome. Weird, I only wish he'd mentioned something about fundamental change last time he ran...

2) A man who has been successful in leading people, creating jobs and wealth and solving a variety of problems in his years of experience in the private and public sectors. I'll let Jack Welsh, who's lived longer and accomplished more things than me, break it down:



It seems odd that this is even a choice for people. The country is hurting and Obama refuses to take responsibility for any of the last 3.5 years. He talks as though he's running for his first term. Also, just like last time, he still loves blaming Bush for everything, talking about how what they inherited was far worse than they imagined. He also drops hints constantly that the Republicans want to go back to the "failed policies of the last 8 years", which I don't know what he's talking about exactly and can't find any evidence of anything in specific, but it just helps scare people into thinking Bush is actually running again. As Obama said himself when he ran the first time, "If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things." Wow, maybe he is a prophet.

The following inspiring and unifying clip is from a recent speech by our President-



What is he talking about? I know it's the same old hate the rich, class envy stuff that plays so well to his base. But does it even make sense? The business owner didn't create his business and success why? Because they had a good teacher in the 3rd grade? Maybe he meant the business owner didn't build the roads and power grid himself. Fine, that's true but a dumb argument as everyone has access to the same things. But then he goes on to say that SOMEONE ELSE built it, as if everyone else in the country paid for the infrastructure the businessman used, but businessmen don't pay so they can't use them without sharing their profits with everyone else. What? Business owners, of course, DO pay taxes. And if they make more money then they pay MORE taxes, so they can say they contributed MORE than many others to build that infrastructure. Many people don't even pay taxes because they don't earn enough, many of them are probably in this crowd cheering for Obama because he is Robin Hood. How do those people that contribute nothing get to be upset about anything? Obama is, I think confused about capitalism, or maybe not. Maybe he just hates it. What other conclusion can one reach? That's why Romney is, to him, the devil. Many people complain about having to vote for the lesser of two evils. At least this time, there's a pretty stark difference between the two and it's not just about who's less evil than the other. I think it's about a lot of pretty big things.

Obama says whatever garbage he needs to to get his fawning fans worked up into a frenzy. Never mind that much of what he says is an outright lie or just doesn't even make sense. He's an organizer: delivering stemwinders to agitated groups of people is his specialty. He talks about a country that's stronger when it works together, yet he has been the most divisive President I can think of- dividing people by race, gender, income, geographic location, religion, etc and getting them to fight against each other. The hypocrisy is glaring.

Below is Charles Krauthammer, who is always great, dissecting Obama's attack on business owners. It is perfect.




Obama can't talk about what he's accomplished over his first four years so he makes up stuff about the person he's running against and distracts people with other things. He (single-handily, according to him) killed Bin Laden, but can't talk too much about war as he's continued much of what he and the left whined about during the Bush years, including Guantanamo. Plus the left hates war, although they're strangely quiet about it these days... He can't talk about his beloved health care law, more than half the country doesn't want it and it was only deemed constitutional by describing it as a tax (something Obama pledged not to do). He can't talk about the stimuli and the money they used to save our economy; as it turns out it didn't do much of anything, lots of money is unaccounted for and lots was given to now failed companies. Oh, and the economy still isn't turning and fear of it worsening hasn't gone away either. Another bad jobs report, another excuse: 'We still aren't where we need to be....but we're headed in the right direction'...how many times can he say the same thing and people still have hope that he knows what he's doing?

I wonder how many people are actually still buying this crap. They say the race is close so far, so I guess quite a few. Lots of people buy crap all the time: occupy wall street, the war on women, Kony 2012, on and on and on. So much is just sensational rubbish to get you fired up by the media or fancy marketing people. Some of it is so subtle you almost can't detect it: what do you think of when someone says Capitalism? (greed, people taking advantage of others to get ahead, etc...) Then what about Socialism? (A unified country where every person has what they need and there's no inequality) Is that about right? Is that based on reality & history OR hyper-sensationalized visions of idealistic/ cynical people with the tools to shape people's thinking?

I feel like I'm good at seeing through it or at least holding out longer than my peers before jumping into or out of something. It's frustrating to see garbage fed to us and many people eating it up without thinking it through. Then, when what they ate up is later found to be a joke or a failure, it silently just goes away... no admission of being wrong or deceived or anything, it just goes away...quickly because everyone is already jumping onto the next bandwagon.