The Dark Knight Rises:

Review With Spoilers

Writer/Director Christopher Nolan's final 3rd part to his Batman trilogy is now playing in theaters.  Having seen it twice this weekend just as my own personal FU to the Aurora shooter, here's my review.  It focuses more on the philosophical themes of the film. 

The basic plot is easily explainable: A mysterious revolutionary named Bane shows up at the head of his own private army which he claims has been created from the poor and downtrodden living in poverty underneath Gotham. He proceeds to start a 'French Revolution' style takeover of the city after launching a series of devastating attacks, which draw Bruce Wayne's Batman out of retirement.  


John Nolte sums the film up brilliantly in one sentence in his own review over at Big Hollywood:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/21/Dark-Knight-Rises-Review-Nolte

"Rises" is about many things, but it is mostly about a rousing defense of an America under siege by a demagogue disguising his nihilistic rage and thirst for revenge and power as a noble quest for equality.

Say...does that sentence remind you of a certain politician who's made it his personal mission to 'transform' America while talking about 'fairness' & 'equality' all the time?


When the film begins Bruce Wayne is a secluded cripple, needing to use a cane after too many injuries while helping to finally get Gotham cleaned up and safe.  

Thanks to the Harvey Dent Act, Police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) has locked away the cities most dangerous criminals.  Peace and safety have been achieved, but we see Gordon struggling with having achieved this positive result based on a lie.  At a yearly commemoration of Dent he plans to finally come out and tell the truth, but changes his mind at the last moment, tucking his planned confession notes back into his jacket pocket.  


Through subsequent events, that confession falls into the hands of Bane, who decides to reveal the truth to the citizens of Gotham to further his own plans of causing chaos. 

Bane is a composite of a lot of leaders that promise an egalitarian utopia to the masses that turn out to be anything but what was promised.


Those who hold up the French Revolution as a positive thing don't know much about it. The French Revolution led to a horrific bloodbath that culminated in a military dictatorship that led to fun military conquests & wars all over Europe and extending down South as far as Egypt. Yeah. Real swell outcome there. France didn't get anything even remotely close to a democracy or a republic until all the French revolutions aholes were long dead. We're talking like 3 or 4 decades.  

"Hey thanks you French Revolutionary butchers! I'll take it from here!

You've been swell! Really!"

Like the French Revolution, Bane convinces many the rich in the city can't be part of their new order, resulting in show trials that are presided over by madman Jonathan Crane aka 'The Scarecrow', who obviously relishes his new role.  Having just left a century in which one class warfare demagogue after another turned it into history's worst bloodbath, we should all know this agenda quite well by now.  So WHERE things are going is no surprise, it's how they get there that Nolan excels in setting up and revealing his story.  

Bane does deliver what he promised - equality...but it's equality in squalor & misery. The rubes fall for it like they always do, easily talked into believing the present capitalist system that requires hard work to achieve success is inherently unfair because THEY didn't succeed in it.


Newsflash to the clueless: just because YOU did not succeed in the present system does not ipso facto prove it is unfair in any way. ANY system that does not guarantee equality of outcome by making everyone financially equal is inherently 'unfair' because SOME will ALWAYS work harder, longer and smarter than others.  And guess what? There has NEVER been such a system in all of human history.  Each new Utopian scheme is literally trying to do the impossible. 


There is no escaping this. It's human nature.


The only way you can create a system in which all are exactly equal financially is to remove all differences between people that cause some to rise above others through their own self-initiative. It results in a lowest-common denominator leveling of every one.


This is why each insane utopian scheme ever since the French Revolution has involved forcing people to dress & act & live EXACTLY ALIKE, with individual expression, freedom and 'wrong' choices all forced out or at least underground.  

Coming to America? Uhm...in your dreams. Half of us would die first.

Mad utopian schemes always result in elites at the top trying to rigidly force human nature into their little predetermined boxes.  And if you can't or won't fit into the little box the elites have prepared, then there's no place for you in the new 'utopia' they are building.  


It is arrogant beyond belief. People who try it need to be scorned, ridiculed, mocked and resisted to the last breath. It is a denial of what makes us all human, and it's the deliberate attempt to remove liberty and freedom of individual choice for the 'common good'.


Success in life & equality are NOT the same thing.  Progressives have made a cottage industry out of deliberately conflating the two.  

They know they will never get anywhere making the insane demand of "I demand the Government make me successful!" so pull a rhetorical trick by saying "I demand the Government make me EQUAL to the successful by pulling them down to my level.  Because it's only fair." 

Utopian elitists believe everybody should be 'guaranteed a sufficient living' by the State apart from their own efforts or abilities.  


But some people want MORE than a 'sufficient living'. And they have the intelligence, ambition and drive to put in the hard work and longer hours to make it happen.


Elite progressives always try to explain this crucial human difference in moral language that reflects badly on the successful.  That people who got wealthy some how cheated or robbed other people to get where they are, so it's only fair they be pulled down into 'equality' with those who never even tried for an exceptional life.


In his new film, Nolan does an exemplary job of truly displaying just how empty and stupid this kind of thinking is.  

Naturally he's being attacked in some quarters for doing so.  The movie reviews at Slate.com and The Guardian both accuse TDKR of 'perpetuating a conservative agenda'.  [Wonder how many times those reviewers have accused a new film of perpetuating a LIBERAL agenda?]


In fact, the OWS-like 'create a fair utopia' scheme Bane uses to pander to people is shown in the final quarter of the film to be nothing more than a COVER STORY for his REAL intentions.

This is where Talia Al Ghul reveals herself and tells a stunned Batman that he's actually been fighting a reformed League of Shadows and that she's the daughter of his nemesis from the first film, Ras Al Ghul.  Turns out she & Bane's plan has ALWAYS been to destroy Gotham, just like her father intended, so this has really all been about paying Batman/Bruce Wayne back and fulfilling her daddy's original agenda.  


So while the film DOES make valid points about Utopian revolutionary movements, it also makes the point that people who use these kind of schemes always have a darker agenda working behind the scenes, but they hide this agenda from their adoring throng until AFTER they have the power they want.  

As for the film itself, the supporting cast is superb.  Anne Hathaway is so enigmatic as Selina Kyle, slinky, sexy thief extraordinaire, that it takes a very strong performance from Christian Bale to keep her from stealing the movie.  


Kyle's Catwoman is the moral center of the film, as we watch her go from believing herself to be assisting in a Robin-Hood-style overthrow of an unjust society by robbing from the evil rich to give to the simon-pure poor to realizing she's helped unleash a monster on innocent people and needs to make amends.  

Early in the film Kyle tells Bruce Wayne a statement that perfectly encapsulates class warfare thinking, in which she tells him the rich of Gotham had better batten down the hatches because a storm is coming, and when it arrives they'll all be wondering how they could live so well while leaving so little for everybody below them.  


This is a classic exposition of the 'zero-sum' belief about wealth creation; that if you earned $1,000,000 in wealth for yourself, that left a bunch of other people collectively $1,000,000 poorer.   Progressives know their class warfare BS can only be believed as long as people buy into the concept that success in life is a zero-sum proposition & the capitalistic system is rigged on the basis of gender, sex, race and class.  

If some guy never applies himself, barely graduates from high school, meanders around and takes low paying jobs and never gets more than $20,000 in a year, while one of his classmates who became the same high school's valedictorian, put himself through college while working a job, then put in 4 years in law school or 8 years of medical school, so that when they hit 40 years of age one is still pulling in $20,000 a year but the other is making $200,000 a year, can you HONESTLY say 'society' has been 'unfair' to one of them?  


Progressives actually believe that they can say this, that 'yes, society has been unfair to one of them.'

Damn. Empty safe = 1 unhappy kitty

Trying to build a society based on envy and resentment of those more successful than others always results in unleashing a monster that leaves nobody better off.  Kyle figures this out too late, but not so late as to help undo what she helped cause.  

Nolan handles the confrontations between Batman & Bane creatively.  There is a kinetic energy to the fights that many films try for and fail to achieve.  Tom Hardy as Bane has most of his face obscured by the voice projector Bane wears, and so makes good use of his eyes to convey the characters rage and fanaticism. 

Sorry, Batman. Paper beats rock!

As an action film it works if you choose to totally dispense with any kind of message or deeper themes, but Nolan does have much thought-provoking exposition in this film.  Is a society where it's up to individual choice in taking risks and effort to determine your level of financial success a fair society?  Or is a society where such things are determined for you by a strong leader  'better'?  


In his 3 Batman films Nolan has brought Gotham's Dark Knight face to face with 3 real threats to a societies well-being:  

A League of Shadows that turned out to be ruthless fanatical vigilantes who kill the innocent along with the guilty, who are convinced Gotham can't be saved,

An anarchist who just wants to watch the world burn, to tear down Gotham's moral core and replace it with chaos because chaos is 'fair', 

A Utopian revolutionary who claims he wants to sweep out an old order of inherent injustices & corruption and bring about 'fairness & equality'. 


Each threat forces the citizens of Gotham & it's dark protector to confront the basic beliefs that holds them together.  Civilization is a fragile thing.  It's not man's natural state and maintaining a society of just laws is hard work because there will always be people out there trying to attack it because they are convinced they have a better way.  


It always starts with convincing enough people the present order is corrupted and unfair to the point it can't be saved or fixed and just needs to be swept away and replaced with something new.  

At the end of the film we see the fight against such people never really ends, and Bruce Wayne knows this.  And so John Blake, the intrepid patrolman we see heroically putting his life on the line for others repeatedly throughout the film, gets rewarded with becoming Gotham's new Dark Knight.  


Nolan is a big enough film maker that while most of Hollywood is churning out nihilistic crap he's not afraid to explore and even defend the big themes that hold American society together.  And he pulls it off brilliantly.  


This is a film I can give the highest recommendation to anyone.  I give it a solid 9/10.  

The Obama Man Can! 

[with apologies to Sammy Davis Jr.]

Who can take tomorrow, dip it all in gloom? 
Separate Americans & create nothin' but doom? 
The Obama Man Can!


Who can take the sunrise, cover it in crap? 
Hand out a buncha food stamps, & say 'be content with that!'? 
The Obama Man Can!


The Obama Man Can! The Obama Man can, cuz he's a socialist 
who's gonna make live like you should!


Who can take the Constitution, shred it in a day?
Refuse to answer questions, then turn and walk away? 
The Obama Man can!


Who can take a Peace Prize, cover it in War? 
Send a 1,000 guns to Mexico, and leave a 100 bodies on the floor? 
The Obama Man Can!


The Obama Man Can! The Obama Man can, cuz he's a socialist 
who's gonna make live like you should!


Who can snap his fingers, media at his beck and call? 
To cover up his gaffes & sell his lies to y'all? 
The Obama Man Can!


Who can take your freedoms and make'em disappear? 
Then turn right around and say there's nothing to fear? 
The Obama Man can! 


Who can make you work harder, harder than before?
Have you struggling to make ends meet
while you dream of days of yore? 
The Obama Man can! 


The Obama Man Can! The Obama Man can, cuz he's a socialist 
who's gonna make live like you should!


Who can lose his job in November,
 get his ass tossed out the door? 
Have to watch us change it back 
to the way it was before? 
The Obama Man can!


The Obama Man can, cause we've had enough of him, 
and so it's time for him to go! 

Note: I'm not the first guy to spoof Obama using 'The Candy Man' song. That was Canadian comedian Greg Morton, who's howler of a video is right here: 

Bain & Romney's Tax Returns:

Democratic Party Leadership Continues It's Latest Stupid Attacks

Actual picture being shared 'round the Net by actual dumbasses

Say, just how many fact-checkin' organizations have debunked this whole 'Romney was still secretly running Bain' attack the Dem's are now into their 2nd week of flogging? 

Fact-Check.org? CHECK! 
http://factcheck.org/2012/07/romneys-bain-years-new-evidence-same-conclusion/

Washington-Posts' The Fact Checker? CHECK!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-and-his-departure-from-bain/2012/07/12/gJQAASzUfW_blog.html

Even Polit-Fact, the joke of the fact-checking universe due to it's blatant partisanship, has to admit Romney wasn't running the company after 1999; the best they can manage is saying the claim is HALF-TRUE because Bain is still Romney's company because he created it &  his name still appeared on paperwork as the CEO:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/13/barack-obama/were-romneys-companies-pioneers-outsourcing/


Yet here we are, 2nd week of the Obama campaign relentlessly shilling an attack that's already been thoroughly DEBUNKED.  


But wait, it gets worse!


The past week the Democratic leadership decided to put out a totally baseless accusation on the basis of their Bain attack that Romney could be a FELON because he might have lied to the Securities & Exchange Commission by secretly running Bain behind the scenes after claiming to have left it.  


What evidence do they have of this?  


Not a shred.  Not a jot. Why, they don't even have a dot! 


But has lack of evidence ever stopped these people from flinging wild accusations around? 

So this past week we had DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi all leading a loud call for Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns.  


Because there are serious QUESTIONS, you see.  


Now Romney files his taxes with the IRS every year just like everybody else that pays taxes.  1/2 the country doesn't pay any federal income taxes, but Romney is part of the 1/2 the country that does.  


Had there been any irregularities Romney's tax returns, the IRS would have announced it by now.  You'd have already heard about an investigation.  


So apparently the IRS thinks Romney's tax returns are just fine and dandy.  There's no problem with them.  He's already released several years worth publicly, and the Democrats have had fun with mis-reporting some of it, like the 'tax break' the Romney's supposedly got for Ann's dressage horse: 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/07/13/Beating-A-Dead-Horse-The-Left-Media-Lies-About-Romney-Taxes


Consider the amount of mis-information & lies they managed to spread off that one 'fact' they gleaned from a publicly released tax return, you can imagine why Romney would be hesitant to release more for them to scrutinize for attack material.  


But let's stop for a second and consider the 3 Democrats presently leading this charge to try to intimidate Mitt into releasing more of his tax returns.  


McClatchy Newspapers asked Wasserman-Schultz, Reid and Pelosi if they would publicly release their own tax returns.  


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/18/Hypocrisy-Reid-Pelosi-Wasserman-Schultz-Refuse-To-Release-Their-Tax-Returns?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#comments

In stunning examples of hypocrisy, though, Pelosi, Reid, and Wasserman-Schultz all refused to release their tax returns when asked by McClatchy Newspapers. 

“The leader has filed a complete financial disclosure report as required by law that includes financial holdings, transactions and other personal information,” Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami told McClatchy. At a news conference, Wasserman Shultz said, “I file full financial disclosure required under the law” and refused to release her tax returns. 

Reid also would not let McClatchy look at his tax returns.In recent weeks, Pelosi has said Romney’s failure to release his tax returns makes him unfit to even be a Cabinet member while Reid said it made Romney unfit to be even a dogcatcher.  

Wasserman Schultz said Romney’s refusal to release his returns was an example of Romney’s “penchant for secrecy.”  

But, as McClatchy reports, “all three refused repeated requests from McClatchy to release their own returns, requests that started before the flap over Romney’s records.” 

By Reid’s, Pelosi’s, and Wasserman Schultz’s standards, they should not be serving in office. 

Wait, do I have this right? 

DWS, Reid & Pelosi claim they have submitted all the proper forms to the IRS, the IRS ain't complaining, everything was found to be fine, so why in the world would you NEED to see their tax returns.................and then they turn around and screech loudly about their compelling NEED to see what Romney is HIDING by not publicly releasing his tax returns and floating the absurd charge he might be a 'felon'?

Do I have this right?

Listen: if there was something wrong or irregular with Romney's tax returns, the IRS would have announced an investigation by now. Apparently Romney's taxes were perfectly fine and everything was found to be legal and aboveboard.

AND THIS IS THE SAME EXCUSE THESE 3 SHAMELESS DEMOCRATS GIVE AS TO WHY YOU CAN'T SEE THEIR OWN TAX RETURNS. 

"My taxes are fine, the IRS hasn't found anything wrong with them & WHY ARE YOU ASKING SO MANY QUESTIONS??  LOOK! OVER THERE! MITT ROMNEY! HE MIGHT BE A FELON! GET AFTER HIM, ASK TO SEE HIS TAX RETURNS AND LEAVE US THE HECK ALONE!"

It's July and their reduced this kind of shameless, baseless BS already?  Fine with me. I'm not complaining at all here.  This is just SUPER FANTASTIC.  If this is the kinda lame stuff they've been reduced to in July, by October we'll be REALLY having some fun.  

The Next Time You Hear A 

Liberal Claim The Richest Americans Don't Pay Their

Fair Share Of The Taxes 

In This Country,

BRING THEM TO THIS POST.

Since class warfare is about all the Dem's have left in this election, let's deal with this particular bit of BS they're constantly pontificating about. 


"The rich in this country don't pay their fair share of the taxes." 


Somebody saying that INTELLIGENTLY would have to KNOW several things: 


1. How much in taxes the rich are CURRENTLY paying
2. They should then have an idea of how MUCH MORE they SHOULD be paying above what they already are paying.  


You know what you discover if you dare to ask them if they know EITHER one of those points?  


You discover that: 


1. They have no CLUE how much the rich are currently paying in taxes and
2. They have no idea how much MORE they should be paying.  


The other day on Twitter Conservative blogger Lee Stranhan couldn't resist responding to a particularly strong example of this kind of Progressive thought: 

Another Twitter user named @canuckamuk decided to 'help' @LeftsideAnnie by pointing out the latest CBO report on how the tax burden is distributed in this country shows that the top 20% highest-earning Americans paid a whopping 94% of all the federal individual income taxes collected: 

Note how @LeftsideAnnie doesn't challenge or dispute what @canuckamuk said.  She goes straight for an ad hominem because she's caught.  She obviously had NO IDEA just how much of the federal tax burden the richest 1% is currently carrying.  What's more - she's really not interested having anybody tell her - certainly not a 'Repukelickan'.  

Here's information available on-line to anybody that wants to bother to spend like 5 minutes of their life researching how much of the federal tax burden is carried by the rich in America: 

http://portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=5e90efa5-355b-4cd2-8908-42c510de959f

http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43373-06-11-HouseholdIncomeandFedTaxes.pdf

Remember - this information is publicly available to ANYBODY who wants to look for it. 

Here's the official Congressional Budget Office's breakdown of the dispersion of the federal tax burden from 2007-2009: 

What do we learn from looking at the actual evidence?  

In 2007, the top 1% highest earning Americans paid 39.6% of individual federal income taxes collected that year.  The top 20% highest earning Americans paid 86% of individual income taxes collected. 

In 2008, that top 1% met 41.8% of the burden, the top 20% meeting 94.6% of the burden. 

In 2009, the top 1% paid 38.7% of all taxes collected, while the top 20% met 94.1% of the income tax burden levied that year.  

What does that tell us? It tells us the amount of the individual income tax burden being carried by that top 20% highest earning Americans jumped 6% in a single year, from 86.0% in 2007 to 94.6% just a year later.  The last year figures are available, 2009, the amount of the tax burden carried by this 20% of the population held steady at 94.1%. 

Now remember: why are we looking at these figures?  Because Progressives keep loudly insisting the rich are still not paying their fair share of the taxes.  They aren't carrying their fair share of the tax burden!  

Even though the amount of individual income taxes collected from the top 20% jumped up a dramatic 6% since 2007, we still hear people insisting it's not enough.  

THIS MEANS THEY MUST THINK 94% OF THE TAX BURDEN ISN'T 'FAIR'.  

This logically means they must have some sort of number in mind.  But you know what happens if you ask them what that 'fair' % is?  

They get MAD.  They don't LIKE being asked that.  @LeftSideAnnie never answered my question: if 94% of the tax burden isn't fair, tell us what % would be fair? 95%? 97 3/4%?  How's about 99.9%?  Got a ballpark number?  

Her only 'answer' was to block me.  Imagine that.  

That's right: the people who loudly go around saying the rich aren't paying their fair share DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH THE RICH ARE PAYING NOW. 

And you know what else? 

THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW.  

THEY GET PISSED OFF IF YOU TRY TO TELL THEM.  

And these people have the nerve to call Conservatives 'know-nothings'. 

HOW can you go around blathering that the rich aren't paying their fair share of the tax burden if you DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH OF IT THEY ARE ALREADY PAYING? 

Yet this is PRECISELY what these people do.  See, they don't need to know how much the rich are paying now, the point is that whatever it is they are paying, it's NOT ENOUGH. 

It's obviously not enough because the Federal Gov't is RUNNING OUT OF MONEY! Duh! 

The politicians who have created this mess don't want to admit they've caused our mounting fiscal catastrophe by not controlling their insane levels of spending.  No, it's far easier to SCAPEGOAT THE RICH and convince your stupid followers RICH PEOPLE being greedy and not paying enough taxes is a big part of the problem here.  

That's the deficit for just THIS year.

"We'd have this fixed by now and be on the road to solving it if only those GREEDY RICH PEOPLE WOULD GIVE UP MORE OF THEIR MONEY IN TAXES!"

You want more money from the rich? Ask for it fairly and openly and let the voters decide.  Stop this stupid dishonest BS about how you 'have' to take more from them because they 'aren't paying their fair share' yet.  

Democratic Talking Points Are

Now Blowing Up So Fast In

Their Faces It's Hard To 

Keep Track Of Them Before

They Are Debunked

Just a few days ago it was the 'OMFG, ROMNEY HAS A SWISS BANK ACCOUNT! WHAT IS ROMNEY HIDING??!!' that blew up in their faces when it was pointed out the DNC Chair that was rolling out this attack - Debbie Wasserman-Schultz - also had revealed in her public tax filings that she has offshore accounts.  Some in Swiss banks. OOPS!

Hey Dems - if you're going to attack Romney for having some of his wealth in offshore accounts, it's PROBABLY a good idea to make darn sure the person you are sending out to launch this attack doesn't have the same 'problem'.  


I'm sure plenty of those big money donors at Obama's $85,000-a-plate fundraisers have some of their wealth in off-shore accounts too.  If the Dem's object to this sort of thing, people escaping paying taxes by off-shoring their money, a good place to start would be by not putting any of their OWN money off-shore.  


Just pointing that out.  It's perfectly legal and if ya gots a problem wit' it, change the fricken' law already.  

Well if you choose to look at these SEC filings a certain way, and

get really creative in how you read them, it's obvious even though

Romney's name appears nowhere, he's still secretly running the company!

OK. So.  That meme blew up about Tuesday.  Yesterday they rolled out a new one based on David Corn's mis-reporting last week in Mother Jones that claimed Romney was still secretly running Bain Capital after he supposedly had left the company to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.  The Boston Globe and others took Corn's story and ran with it, trying to blow it up into a big campaign attack on Romney.  


Oh it blew up, all right.  


After one day of Corn & others screaming that Romney had been caught in a 'lie' and had committed a 'felony' by lying on SEC filings, this meme was easily blown up in less than a day: 


http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/12/mitt-romney-bain-exit/

Ben LaBolt is left to try to salvage this by claiming Romney was still 'listed' as CEO of the company, etc. etc.  But that wasn't what Corn was claiming.  Corn & The Boston Globe claimed Romney was still secretly running Bain behind the scenes & lying about it and filing false reports with the SEC, and since it's a private equity firm that manages investments, you can't do that without, you know, managing the investments.  

Nice going there, Boston Globe! You schmucks!

Ben Shapiro rightly calls Corn & the Boston Globe & everybody else who ran with this story without doing any basic fact-checking at all exactly what they are: hacks & liars.


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/07/12/obama-felon-lie-romney-apology-demand


Of course they haven't learned anything from this, which is why the next 4 months are going to be so much fun.  

UPDATE! How badly did The Boston Globe & others screw up their fact-checking on this latest Romney attack?  This badly:

Fact Check.org had already roundly debunked this LAST WEEK on July 2nd:

http://factcheck.org/2012/07/factcheck-to-obama-camp-your-complaint-is-all-wet/

Well Imagine That.....

Turns Out That Being 

Close-Minded Is Pretty Much 

A Liberal Strategy....

If you've ever wondered why self-professed Liberals/Progressives have only ever made up around 16-21% of the American population, I think George Lakoff just demonstrated why with the release of his handy new Little Blue Book.  

Graphic illustration of why 'The Liberal Bubble' is so essential to Liberal peace-of-mind

Lakoff is considered one of those big philosophical movers n' shakers for progressives, one of those guys who comes up with their 'big ideas' about how to present themselves to the unwashed masses. This new book of his is called 'The Little Blue Book as kind of a tip of the hat to Chairman Mao's Little Red Book.  It's supposed to be full of all kinds of helpful ideas and advice to help all the Good Little Progressives out there present Progressiveness in the best possible light to the unconverted.  

Blogger Zombie over at PJMedia.com has written a pretty damn good take down of Lakoff's book here.  It's kinda long, but well worth a read.  I encourage you to go over and read the whole thing before going on below: 

http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/07/09/the-little-blue-book-quotations-from-chairman-lakoff/

Ever notice when Liberals lose elections they always claim the only reason they lost was their terrible MESSAGING?  That's Lakoff you're hearing there.  He's the guy that came up with that: never EVER admit your policies didn't work & that they sucked or that voters heard you out, understood what you wanted and REJECTED it - just confidently claim the people out there were too stupid to understand what you were saying.  

Lakoff's thought has permeated the entire 20% of the American population that is Liberal: when we lose, it's because we didn't EXPLAIN this well enough.  Our policies & beliefs are so friggin' AWESOME and UNQUESTIONABLE that we don't even need to spend one wasted second re-examining them because only stupid people would do that.  

Zombie came up with a helpful chart that pretty much explains the entire first half of Lakoff's book, where he waxes eloquent about faulty messaging being the reason they keep getting their asses kicked by the other 80% of the population: 

As I said in earlier posts such as 'Understanding Liberal Pathology Part I, Liberals are not results-oriented people, they are THEORY-ORIENTED people.  The old joke 'THIS TIME it's going to work because the theory is sound!" is funny because it has an essential truth at the foundation of it.  

Progressives actually condition their minds to shy away from thoughts about results and outcomes. Instead they totally focus on the supposed morally superior intentions that drive their policies - and thusly those policies can never change because it would be tantamount to changing their morality.  

No matter how many times their ideas or policies fail or are rejected, they remain convinced through their own stunted reasoning supplied by people like Lakoff that their only problem is how they are presenting these ideas & policies.  This is why they can't come up with any new ideas or methods, and when the pendulum swings their way again and they resume power they go right back to doing exactly what they were doing before, even though it's never worked.  

The 2nd half of Lakoff's book is filled with his advice to Progressives about how to better sell their progressivism to the public.  Here, as Zombie notes, Lakoff's book quickly demonstrates why you often can't have a real debate with a Lakoff-trained Liberal about the simplest of things.  Here's his advice in a nutshell: 

Look at that point #1 there.  What's the single most crucial thing he wants Progressives to do when conversing about issues & policies with Conservatives? 

Some people read that to mean Lakoff is counseling his readers to IGNORE Conservative arguments.  I don't think that's what he's doing.  He's telling them to recast the Conservative argument within the more 'moral' Progressive framework.  In other words, to expose the bad morality behind the Conservative argument by reframing it.  

I already demonstrated in the middle part of my article "Understanding Liberal Pathology" how Progressives do this constant re-framing of Conservative arguments: 

"We need Medicare reform" / re-framed by Lakoff: "I hate old and sick people."

"We need union pension reform." / re-framed by Lakoff: "I hate working families."

"I have religious objections to funding birth control for other people." /re-framed by Lakoff "I hate women and want to make war on them."

"We need public school reform." / re-framed by Lakoff: "I hate teachers and kids."

"ObamaCare is fine, nothing wrong with this 2,000 page bill, we care 

more than you, and WHY DO YOU HATE OLD PEOPLE &

WANT THEM TO DIE?!"

In other words, every single issue must be reframed to expose the rotten, terrible, no-good, truly awful motives driving the Conservative to make their case, vs. the totally awesome, simon-pure, angelic & god-like morality that has the Progressive advocating doing the opposite.  

Lakoff's point #2 naturally follows point #1; after you re-frame the Conservative's argument using your own language to expose it's rotten morality in point #1, go on to show how you have claimed the moral high ground in point #2.  

Yes folks, George Lakoff is why Progressives not only misconstrue everything you say in an argument to make it look like you hate old people, the sick, the young, the poor, minorities, and the entire planet, it's ALSO why they then go on to pound their chests and crow about how morally superior they are to you.  

Zombie then sums up his fine essay by demonstrating why following Lakoff's advice has caused Progressives to lose - and why they'll KEEP losing as long as they do what he recommends.  

One side is engaging the other's arguments and investigating them and often refuting them, and one side is totally ignoring what the other side says.  By refusing to engage honestly and look at Conservative arguments, Liberals often only know their own lampooned versions of the Conservative position.  For this reason they spend all their time trying to tear down strawmen of their own making.  

Meanwhile Conservatives - having actually listened to what Liberals were arguing and dealing with it - have made much progress in exposing the weaknesses in the Liberal's arguments.  

Lakoff's advice on how to argue socialism vs. capitalism, for instance: 

Lakoff recommends saying,

“This debate is about liberty from corporate government and corporate meddling in our lives,”

and

“The laissez-faire market limits your personal liberty.”

Each retort is an attempt to reclaim the word “liberty” from those nasty conservatives. In the Lakoff framing, the bigger and more powerful the federal government becomes, the more freedom we have.

Think for a moment about how stupid that 1st sentence is.  'Corporate Government' is supposedly limiting your liberty, and 'meddling' in your life, and to counter this, we must vastly expand the power of the Federal Government because having your liberty curtailed by the Federal Government & having it meddle more in your life is somehow much more preferable.  

In the liberal mind the free market can't have control or decide things like who ends up with the wealth because it's dominated by an evil - greed.  So it's far better if Government controls the market & makes the decision about who ends up with the wealth & distributes it 'fairly' because the Government has altruistic intentions and is made up of a special class of elite people who are totally capable of making these decisions for everybody else.  

As Zombie incredulously notes more than once in his essay, THIS guy is considered one of Progressivism's leading lights?  

Since many of Lakoff's ideas are patently absurd as an attempt to convert others & change minds, some have put forth the idea that the REAL purpose of The Little Blue Book is to ensure those already on the Progressive Reservation and presently captured by the GroupThink stay there through intentionally brainwashing themselves to never seriously take a look at Conservative arguments as they are actually presented.  

http://minx.cc/?post=330828

Self-Hypnosis? A commenter going by "... is what JQ Public is thinking" notes:

One of the commenters over there had an interesting take. He thinks Lakoff - 'the thinker' - has a purpose beyond what seems to be a fairly stupid surface strategy. While the method might not convert non-believers, it makes the believers they DO HAVE absolutely bullet-proof from facts or reason. They are literally taught not to think - aka, 'indoctrination' in the darkest sense of that word. Such people can be made to do anything.

Ah, so it's not a hypnosis technique taught to readers, but a hypnosis technique directed at readers. If they themselves learn to "think" by never thinking, they can at least never be persuaded themselves.

Probably not his intention, but almost certainly his actual accomplishment.

As long as the top leaders of the Progressive movement keep listening to this guy's advice, I don't think we have that much to worry about in the long run.  


UPDATE! Obama now determined to prove that he follows Lakoff's stupid advice! From Allahpundit at Hot Air:


http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/12/obama-you-know-what-my-problem-is-poor-messaging/

 The point, as is always the case in “messaging” complaints, is to compliment yourself on the correctness of your policy choices while blaming their failure on some facile communication problems. Serious question for liberals: Do you agree? Last I checked, there are plenty of policy complaints about The One from the left. Am eager to hear someone in his base defend the idea that had his rhetoric at the time soared a bit higher, the Democrats’ failure to include the public option in the final O-Care bill would be no biggie. Being condescended to by your political leaders is fun, huh?

Exit question: What’s the “inspiring” explanation for running guns to Mexican drug cartels?