Eleventy Dimensional Chess

Do they... want Something to happen?

The freaks and weirdos are out in force showing up at the various district events and townhalls that the congressmembers are throwing, and they're headed out to the various presidential appearances as well.

Shouting, howling mobs, not a lot different from the shouting, howling mobs who tried so very hard to thwart school and housing desegregation back in the day. Of couse they lost... eventually... but getting to that point didn't happen without a good bit of bloodshed and much social and political upheaval.

Some thinkers posit the necessity of sacrifice, blood sacrifice, to obtain desired goals, and I'm wondering...

When Gun-boy showed up at the New Hampshire presidential town-hall and was instantly lionized by the media, it was clear Something Big was -- potentially -- in the offing.



Imagine, just imagine what would have happened to Gun-boy if he'd shown up at a Bushevik event last summer. The gurney would have hauled his smoking corpse away, especially if he'd shown any sort of Leftist tendencies. But just being there with his gun and his sign would have been enough for the snipers to take him out, or maybe they'd have sent a Predator drone armed with a Hellfire missile. And the media would have done everything in their power to justify his summary execution. Everything.

So I'm pondering this. I'm pondering the contrast between what would have occurred under the Busheviks and what is occurring under the Obamanauts. The White House and the congressional Dems are seemingly encouraging this summer's townhall anarchy. Certainly the media is playing along. Entertainment, not danger as far as they're concerned, and it is the August Recess, after all.

Guns seem to be proliferating at these events, being shown or dropped or threatened. The howling and shrieking becomes louder... pushing, shoving. Police stand by, ordinary police, not Robocops, and the Secret Service and all the apparati of the National Security State are all but invisible.

The anti-desegregation mobs ultimately had to be fended off with the National Guard as there was no reasoning together with them. They had to be stopped. But even the presence of the Guard only partially defused their fury, and many people would die trying to defend civil rights for all even after the Guard made clear whose side the Government was on.

The current mobs are ostensibly assembling to oppose ObamaCare, whatever that may mean, but "issues" proliferate endlessly, swirling around the tradional antipathy to "socialism" and "communism" and "Government Control of Our Lives," and all of that -- right out of the Segregation Forever playbook, chapter and verse. It's the same thing based on the same fear of Teh Negroes, and the loss of what tattered remnants of White Privilege remain.

So let's consider what is really going on. Segregation was... eventually... ended, at least as a matter of law. Defacto segregation, of course, is still typical of much of America, but there is no legal support for it any more, and many Americans have become comfortable among members of other races and ethnic groups. Progress. Yay.

But a way of life was ended along with segregation, and it was a way of life that centered around notions of racial superiority and inferiority that were comfortable and comforting for some -- regardless of race -- and intolerable for others.

Is a way of life in jeopardy now? I would say certainly, it is the middle class as we have known it, and the assault on that way of life is reaching its climax. I've written before about the forced impoverishment that is underway what with the continuing unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure statistics that have not improved a bit -- and in fact have worsened -- under the current administration. There is immense downward pressure on wages, and the government is doing nothing at all to counter or ameliorate that situation. The number of foreclosures is skyrocketing, and the government is still unable to -- or is it unwilling to? -- intervene in any significant way. Households' debt burdens continues to extinguish any sign of consumer spending, and thus retard any sign of economic recovery among the masses, and the government will not do anything whatsoever to ameliorate the household debt problem. Only the Universal Masters get bailed out. Households? No way. In fact, actions taken so far have mostly served to increase the burden on households.

And now comes Health Care Reform which will place another burden on households and individuals. That burden is the Mandate.

Everyone has to be covered. What that means is that everyone has to be in a Program -- like Medicare and Medicaid or Veterans Health Care or Indian Health Care or what have you -- or they have to have health insurance coverage through private insurance that they have to purchase on their own or through their employer -- if they have one.

For many of the currently uninsured, this will be a significant new financial burden; for most of those currently insured it will be a burden over time. It will accelerate the forced impoverishment under way. But look. A Benefit goes along with it. You won't be forced into bankruptcy to pay for your appendectomy. At least not immediately.

If the chess player's goal is the remaking of society with the masses much poorer than before -- but let's say, "cared for" -- and the well off fabulously better off than ever before, it may take some interesting ploys and feints to get where the player is going. And it may take some sacrifice as well. Based on what we've seen so far, it's pretty clear where things are headed, and it is not toward a Progressive Paradise.

So are we seeing more eleventy dimensional chess? Maybe. By and large, Americans were not sympathetic to the howling mobs opposing desegregation, in fact, many were horrified. The bloodshed that accompanied desegregation efforts brought constant shame to the perpetrators and their supporters. Eventually, the disgust with those who insisted on preserving the status quo overwhelmed their ability to hold on, and even George Wallace admitted the error of his ways.

We're seeing similar mobs now. They're trying to hold on to their sense of privilege and right, something they believe is under assault through the advent of universal health care. The chess player who wants to win is going to want these mobs out front, in the hope that they will inspire the same sort of revulsion the segregationist mobs did fifty years ago.

It may work.