The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Alinsky as Rhetorical Dadaist

Posted on | May 27, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Big Peace)

Andrew McCarthy in the National Review makes a perceptive point on our good President, noting how the duck-and-weave on Israel is straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook. Also, that pattern is the same as what was used on ObamaCare. Emphasis mine:

Obama is an Alinskyite, though, a practical radical. Ineffective radicals are so blinded by ideology, so intoxicated by their own sense of righteousness, that they refuse to gauge the public sensibilities. Alinskyites are no less committed to their ideology; indeed, only a person who has completely bought into his ideology can maintain the patient discipline necessary to implement his utopia incrementally. That discipline is what makes the Alinskyite effective. Such an operator understands that you must always check the public pulse: Figure out how far you can push people, but never push so far that you lose political viability. Without power, radicalism is a dead end. The race is not to the swift but to the electable.
So Obama tweaked his health-care positions, pretending he’d never said the things he’d said, massaging his message depending on the sensibilities of his audience. He shrewdly banked on a press corps willing to be enlisted to his purposes, and on the natural tendency of decent people to give likeable politicians the benefit of the doubt, to assume they are not being lied to.

Sure, we like to treat people as innocent until proven guilty. Life is more efficient that way. However, technology is about to deliver a thorough spanking to the Alinsky’s collection of cunning stunts. In an era when having a politician verbally kick his own butt is as simple as splicing a series of YouTube clips together, politicians are going to have to be more forthright.

Shifts in policy opinions, e.g. RomneyCare, may be allowed, if there is a clear rationale. Wavering on something like the sanctity of human life will not do.

In BHO’s case, we’re going to see that his Alinsky tricks are like Dada: effective as long as not self-aware. Also, no one else is aware of the Alinskyisms. Now that there is an internet around, and WCFCYA, no politicians are going to get away with a 2008 triumph of style over substance again. No amount of propaganda is going to make mediocrity a big deal again. The seemingly incongruous selection of Joe ‘Effing’ Biden for VP was a tell: without the Alinskyism, the teleprompter, and the speech writers, there really isn’t much difference between BHO and Plugs.

Unfortunately, the spiritual void of Alinskyism means that there are no alternatives for BHO. When his only principle is pursuit of power, then run for President he must. He becomes the Über-lemming, driving off the cliff, all ahead full-tilt boogy, simply because he has nothing else to do with himself. It would be tragic, if it wasn’t so flipping expensive.

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Category: Barack Obama

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Whenever anyone infers that Obama is still a radical/socialist underneath all the smoke & mirrors, it’s not just the left, but supposedly respectable liberals/progressives and “moderates” who screetch and demand retractions. They sputter, “It’s not like he’s tried to implement single-payer health care, or rein in the power of corporations, etc.”

    Okay, what if we had an openly socialist president? Would the results of his/her political efforts been that much different than what’s happened under Obama? Heck, one could argue that governance under an openly socialist president effectively would have been more to the right of Obama because Alinskyism is more tactically effective than honest socialism.        

    Btw, Smitty, I hope you’re right that, “In an era when having a politician verbally kick his own butt is as simple as splicing a series of YouTube clips together, politicians are going to have to be more forthright.” For example, how much good video do we have on Obama from the old days (that is not being sequestered by the likes of the L.A. Times)? I’m afraid that you’re prediction might be more prescient in respect to elections farther in the future than 2012.

  • http://twitter.com/dicentra63 Dicentra spectabilis

    “Alinskyites are no less committed to their ideology”

    Alinsky’s only ideology was to overturn the current power structure, to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-Nots. Alinsky was fully aware that the new group at the wheel would be just as corrupt and oppressive as the old group, but he didn’t care. He was interested only in the gamesmanship involved in shaking things up.

    Alinsky is more about methodology than ideology; nevertheless, you can easily argue that the eventual goal of most Leftists–Obama included–is only to toss out the old guard and install themselves so that they can have their turn at the whip.

  • Anonymous

    O’Sputnik is openly socialist if one doesn’t play the left’s game of narrowly defining the beast, they insist that he’s a moderate because they know that the word socialist is somewhat toxic. The fact of the matter is there is no significant difference  between Socialists and supposedly 
    respectable liberals/progressives or the Khmer Rouge for that matter. They are merely separate points on the same arc descending into serfdom and darkness.

  • http://pumping-irony.livejournal.com/ Wilbur Post

    Probably true, but hardly matters; the whole damn party is nothing but con-men and liars, from John “I was for the war before I was against it” Kerry to Bill Clinton tweezing different meanings of “IS” to Al Gore saying something illegal is not illegal if there’s nobody to arrest him.  In the past, the media always covered for them so they could go DaDa all year long.  But McCarthy is correct in that as the media’s influence wanes and the internet grows more important, that advantage is a quickly melting iceberg.

  • David R. Graham

    Fine post, Smitty.  Good comments, particularly that Alinsky is about methodology, not or not so much ideology.  Alinsky’s frame of reference correlates with that of his contemporary, McLuhan:  process IS substance.

    Of course that itself is an ideology, a seductive one, especially for idiot savants.

    Leftist ideology is phlegmatic and time-sensitive.  It derives from scientists, meaning, among other things, it can turn on a dime when desired outcomes shift.  (Who thinks scientists don’t have agendas going in is ready to buy a famous bridge.)  Scientists are the political correlate of Late Middle Age Prelates and Mohammedan Scholars.  Alinsky and McLuhan were scientists.  The modern term for someone in Alinsky’s role is political consultant.

    Overall, scientists and political consultants devote their lives to process, not substance. They’re not builders.  They’re manipulators.  They’ll do as they’re asked or as they wish to produce, through process, the result paid for or ordered.  Their fun is the process, which is for them the real substance.  Their position in society, the things it enables them to do, and the actual doing of those things is what they like.  Their interest is being in position to do whatever they want to do.  Smitty’s post goes to the same observation from a slightly different direction.

    Alinsky had employers, as did McLuhan, as do their descendants.  BHO is a political consultant with more than the usual clout.  He represents a nation, but which one?

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